My Years with Ludwig von Mises.pdf - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

time his connection with the Yale University Press had begun. (See
Chapter 8, "The Story of Human Action.='=')
The next twenty-five years were positively the most productive
and creative of Lu's life. I never knew how he could manage, but
he had time for everything and everyone. His mind and his time
were equally well organized. And there was not a Saturday or
Sunday-if there was no NAM meeting-when he did not go with
me to a museum or to an art gallery in the morning and to a theater
in the evening.
I have already written about Professor Paul Mantoux and mentioned
.his son Etienne. Etienne was very dear to Lu. He often
attended his course in Geneva and came to the house to converse
with Lu, who thought Etienne to be one of the most promising
scholars of the future. At the beginning ofthe war Etienne served
in the French air force as an observation officer on the Saar frontier.
In 1941, under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, he
came to the United States for research at Princeton='s Institute for
Advanced Studies. He was working on a book on Keynes (published
in 1952 by Charles Scribner='s Sons). He came to New York
often, sometimes two or three times a month, to see Lu. One special
afternoon, Tuesday, March 16, 1943, I will never forget. He
came early; I served tea; we spoke about his parents, Paris, Geneva,
the war. But soon I felt that he was impatient to talk to Lu
about his work; I excused myself and went out. At the door, before
closing it, I turned around, and suddenly the couch, where
Etienne had been sitting, seemed to have disappeared. In its place
I saw Etienne in uniform, lying on a battlefield, his eyes closed,
killed. This picture lasted only a few seconds. I closed the door
behind me, went into my room, sat down and tried to get hold of
myself. But the image would not disappear. Later, when Etienne
had left, Lu came into my room and gave me Etienne='s greetings. I
could not restrain myself; I told Lu what I had seen. Lu laughed at
me: "You simply are imagining things. He is not in the air force
any more.=" But I saw he was uneasy and said this only to quiet me.
A short time afterwards, Etienne returned to France and resumed
his officer='s duties in the air force. On April 29, 1945, hardly more
than a week before the bells rang for victory and peace, his plane
was shot down near a small Bavarian village in the Danube Valley,
killing him.
Lu was deeply shocked and grieved. Etienne Mantoux had
meant so much to him, and Lu later wrote in his article "Stones
Into Bread-The Keynesian Miracle='=':
A highly gifted French economist, Etienne .Mantoux, has analyzed
Keynes point for point. Etienne Mantoux, son of the famous histo-
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